


Gold, or Second Chances

by phoenixchild



Category: Cherik - Fandom, X-Men, X-Men First Class - Fandom, XMFC - Fandom, x-men days of future past, xm: dofp, xmen - Fandom
Genre: AU, Charles writer AU, Erik singer AU, High School AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 07:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1336753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixchild/pseuds/phoenixchild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Charles first meets Erik, he is fifteen, a writer of detective stories, a terrible cook, and shies away from affection. The second time Charles meets Erik, years later, he is still in love with him, and wants nothing more than to kiss him in front of everyone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gold, or Second Chances

The first time they had been together, when Charles was only fifteen, he had been too shy to kiss Erik in public. Whenever Erik would turn to him, lips blushing and about to land on Charles’, Charles would feign distraction and turn his head away, so that Erik would end up with his pursed lips buried in Charles’ hair or ear. Erik soon caught onto Charles tactics, endlessly attempting new ploy after new ploy in order to catch Charles unaware and unprepared. Charles had always seemed to be able to read his mind though, and intercepted Erik’s marauding path as though they were playing long, ongoing game of chess. 

Now Charles was twenty-three, and things were very different. Now Charles wanted nothing more than to be able to hold Erik’s hand in public, to steal kisses over dinner and wine, to give some semblance that they were together. A couple. An item. In love. But, “it was bad for publicity,” both their agents said; “This society frowns upon it. Safer to stay closeted.” 

Every time Erik was asked by interviewers if he “had a special girl” and he replied with either “no, no one for me” or “I’m enjoying being single” or “I’m far too busy to contemplate a relationship,” Charles couldn’t help but feel a sharp pang of sadness, of inferiority and insecurity. But Charles also knew that Erik felt the same pang whenever Charles robotically replied with one of the same answers to the same question, and that was a small comfort.

They had first met in the library; Charles’ regular hide-out at school. It was rare that he ever looked up from his castle of books –he’d pile them around himself in stacks, like a fortress to keep the other boys out of his world. He preferred the mixed company of knowledge and other characters anyway. He hadn’t meant to look up that day, into the kaleidoscope eyes of fedora-boy. He’d been struck by a revelation of foreshadowing in the plot of his current page-turner, and looked up in awe, trying to reign in his racing thoughts and the lump in his throat. Fedora-boy had just been there, strong-jawed, mischievous eyes and looking like the kind of boy that might be one to pin scrawny-boned Charles to a wall, should he feel like it (this first impression later turned out to be not too far from the truth, although it happened in a very different way to how Charles first imagined it would). Charles tried to contort his fiction-twisted face into a quick, courteous smile and look back at the open pages, but his eye must have caught on fedora-boy’s splintery jaw, because he lingered too long. Fedora-boy’s eyes sparked in an arrogant mirth, and a fish-hook smile caught Charles’ sea-blue eyes and refused to let go.

At least, that was how Charles liked to remember it. He romanticized of course, ever the writer. 

He closed his eyes and lifted his hands away from his laptop keys for a moment, trying to recreate the scene from Erik’s point of view. He wondered how Erik would remember it. Probably differently, not quite so gold in tone –Erik had had a girlfriend at the time, although the relationship was not to last much longer. Maybe it was gold in tone in his memory too? Charles had no more time to wonder, because Erik’s key had just scratched in the door. Even after all these years, Charles’ entire torso lurched with excitement when he heard that key, those footsteps. Or when he saw that fish-hook smile that he knew was only for him. Today’s lurch was made even more intense by Erik’s four-week absence, recording in New York. Usually they managed to spend a weekend together every fortnight, but they had both been so busy in their lines of work recently. Charles hated the distance, in miles and times.

“Tea, mien libeling?” Erik greeted him, placing his keys on the bench and leaving his bags by the door, so naturally, as though he had only gone to the corner shop for milk.

“No. Kiss first!” Charles demanded, beaming up at Erik.

Erik hurriedly flipped the switch on the kettle, before jumping into his lover’s lap and granting an enveloping hello-kiss to Charles. Charles nestled into the crook of Erik’s neck, pulling the old, familiar smell of his spices-and-chocolate deodorant into his nose. He’d been wearing that since high school too, though thankfully he didn’t douse himself in quite so much of it. 

Erik peered over the stray typed pages that Charles had spent the last few hours laboring over. 

“How’s the novel going?” he asked, picking up a leaf and skimming over the sea of red ink already there.

“Could be much better. I keep getting distracted. The agency keeps calling.” Charles gestured to the notepad by his phone, about ten different appointments for castings, fitting and shoots listed down the lined paper.

Erik made a face, quickly trying to mask it, but Charles didn’t even need to catch it to know what Erik was thinking. His entire demeanor tinged sour at the mention of the agency. Charles tried to soothe him, stroking the plane of Erik’s back.

“I know you don’t like it, my love. I know you think modeling’s a terribly shallow industry. And it is. But I need something to pay the bills with, something to pay for my tea. And food –I suppose I need that too. It’s just until the novel’s finished, until I can support myself that way.”

Erik sighed. “I know. You’ve said. I just don’t like that you’re not doing what you love, what you were made to do,” he said.

“Well, neither of us are doing what makes us happy,” Charles pointed out. “But I am doing what I was made to do –just not full-time, not for work. Yet. But I will,” Charles replied.

“I know.”

“Besides, you can’t talk, mister selling-your-soul-to-pop-music.” Charles teased, trying to lighten the mood. It worked.

Erik growled playfully, a deep rumbling purr in his chest. Charles grinned. The switch on the kettle flicked, but neither noticed –kisses, and the rustle of clothes descending to the floor on the way to the bedroom, drowned it out.

Charles woke at sunset; Erik stroking his skin and trailing kisses across his back and shoulders. They had spent the entire afternoon making love and post-sex napping; something they both missed intensely in Erik’s absences. 

“Hello,” Erik smiled out, sensing Charles waking. The former stretched himself out, catlike.

“Hello,” Charles grinned back, winding himself back into a ball around Erik.

“Sleep good?”

“Much better than in an empty bed.” Charles’ words were muffled by Erik’s stubbly jaw. “Did you want to go out for dinner tonight?”

“Nein, libeling. Not when I’ve been away for so long. I want to stay in so I can kiss you whenever I want. Also, going out involves clothes, and I like you naked.”

“Good! Now tell me about New York.”

*

The first time Charles invited Erik over to his house was a disaster. It was a month after the library incident. Erik had just broken up with his girlfriend, but aside from being tired-eyed and a little paler and thinner than usual, he seemed his usual self. Although Charles wondered when the last time he had had a meal was, and after half an hour of hearing Erik’s stomach growl and Erik protest that he wasn’t actually hungry, Charles insisted on cooking him lunch. But Charles had never actually cooked before, and he was very visibly shaking with nerves. He went through five slices of bread before he managed to not burn the toast to a cinder, and half a carton of eggs (two burnt, one cracked on the floor, another with splinters of shell all throughout the pan, and two only half in the pan). Thankfully, after enduring Erik laughing at him and quite obviously trying to flirt with Charles’ thirteen year old (but twenty-something-looking) sister (thankfully failing), Charles had produced two nicely fried eggs on (cold) toast, which Erik gobbled down gratefully in Charles’ room, after confessing that he actually had hardly eaten in three days. 

After the plate had been licked free of every breadcrumb and drop of yolk, Erik’s eyes began to wander around Charles’ room. Charles self-consciously leaned back against a wall, trying to make his blush and himself as invisible as possible. He wished he had thought to clean up first, to at least put his dirty laundry in the basket, or put his badly-written stories under the bed. 

Erik inspected the bookshelves, paying no attention to the mess, or at least feigning that he didn’t mind it. 

“You’ve got such an eclectic collection... Wilde, Ted Hughes, HP Lovecraft, then BAM! Science and space, and then we’re into … ‘The Sisters Grimm’?” Erik raised an eyebrow. “How old are you, ten?”

Charles wasn’t sure whether to be offended or whether to take it as a joke, and so out of his lips came a tumbling, nervous laugh.

“I like ‘The Sisters Grimm.’ It’s light and funny. And quite original, I think.”

Erik took the blue-bound book off the shelf and read the blurb. Charles wished he didn’t –the book did read like a child’s. But if Erik thought less of Charles for the childish book, he didn’t show it. He casually put it back on the shelf and kept looking along the titles. He made a few more exclamations over authors, a few I-read-this-when-I-was-a-kid’s that made Charles feel somehow like he was seven years younger than Erik, and even one this-is-actually-one-of-my-favorites. (The book was one that Charles hadn’t even read yet –Nietzsche, ‘On the Genealogy of Morality.’ He made a mental note to read it as quickly as possible in order to discuss it with Erik.)

When Erik had finished scanning the shelves, he made to step over to Charles’ side of the room, but his foot slid on a stack of papers. A curse word fell from his lips in the split of a second, but not in the grotesque way it falls from most lips –this fell with a fast ‘f’ and a low, breathy ‘uh,’ and a slashing, deliberate ‘k’. Charles had to suppress a little shiver crawling down his spine –he had said it so beautifully, like a poet. 

After flailing ridiculously to regain his balance, Erik bent to pick up the papers. Charles realised with a nauseous jolt that they were his stories.

“Why didn’t you tell me that you wrote?” Erik asked, reading the title page of one (“The Disappearance of Daniel John: A Detective Story by Charles Xavier”).

“They’re not good. It really wasn’t important,” Charles replied quietly.

“Pfft, not important. Pfft, not good. I’ll be the judge of that. Will you read them to me?” Erik’s eyes (green in this light), and his fish-hook smile won over Charles, and he had to tame his jittery fingers with subtle, deep breaths (hoping that Erik wouldn’t notice, but how could he not?) before he began to read. 

Charles had always known that he read well, and that he had a pleasant voice to listen to (he thanked his accent for that). Once he calmed his nerves, Charles took advantage of the situation to show off the one thing he felt he was good at, manipulating his voice to his characters, their moods, and the story’s pace. Occasionally he tripped over unrevised sentences, making mental notes to alter them later, and occasionally he worried that he was boring Erik. But when the closing sentence had been recited, dooming the characters, and Charles looked up to find Erik’s face looking spellbound, a swell of pride rose in his chest. He grinned, and went to sit next to Erik on the bed.

“You must have terribly high standards if you think that isn’t good.” 

Charles’ grin widened. 

“I do have high standards. …Do you really think it’s good?” Erik nodded vigorously. “There wasn’t anything you didn’t like, or anything that you’d change, or a sentence that didn’t flow…? Be honest…”

A thoughtful twist formed in Erik’s smile, and he took a hold of the pages. Skimming through it, he added suggestions, little ones, and changes of words, most of them the ones Charles had noticed himself.

“Here I’d say something like ‘evaporated’ instead of just plain old ‘sunk’. It gets the meaning across better, I think, considering he drowned. It gives it a heavier mental image too. More poetic and eloquent –read some Sylvia Plath. Her imagery’s so vivid, and it’ll give you so much more to work with, I think. But you do write well. And I do really like it. I think you have a gift, Charles.”

Charles had no idea what to say. He felt a mixture of built-up ego, pride, and a sense of vulnerability at letting someone he liked so much as Erik read his writing. But he was also very, very grateful and happy that Erik had been so honest. The plethora of feelings made his face shine.

“Thank you,” Charles said, lowly. “For being so honest with me.”

“I don’t know how else to be,” Erik brushed it off, and his sentence was cut short by a kiss.

When Charles pulled back, Erik was stumbling off the bed, unable to make eye contact and muttering about needing to be home to help his mother with dinner. Charles didn’t move to stop him, paralyzed with a sickening weight, and the horrified thought of “what have I done?”

*

While Erik read over Charles’ latest chapters, Charles watched over their cooking dinner, keeping a nervous eye on the expressions whispering over Erik’s face. Charles always knew his best pieces were ones that made Erik’s face a myriad of happy and sad, and the furrowed-eyebrows of a plot twist. Tonight, Erik’s face was an aurora, an enigma of expressions, and only twice did he pick up the red pen. Charles knew he was onto something with this story.

“Charles, this is brilliant. Best chapter yet. Only two things –there was the bit on page ten, where I was confused about what the character was actually doing, it needs rewording, and page five, where I swear you’ve edited out that part I loved. I demand to know what happens next.” 

Charles mimed zipping his lips closed.

“You’ll just have to wait. Also, dinner’s nearly ready.” 

Charles turned to lower the heat on the hotplate, but Erik bounded over to him in less than a second, arms wrapped around Charles’ middle and hips pressing him to the bench. He nuzzled Charles’ neck, growling.

“Tell meeeeee.” He pulled the vowels out, growling playfully and fingers skipping under Charles’ shirt.

Dinner was to go cold that night, and be reheated three hours later, when Charles finally gave in and told Erik his planned ending. 

*  
Erik and Charles only went two days without talking after that surprise kiss; Sunday and Monday. By Tuesday, Erik was in the library, invading Charles’ book fortress by means of a paper plane. Charles glared at it, not knowing who had sent it his way or if it had only landed on his open book by accident. When he looked up with a scowl painted on his face to search out his assailant, he caught a half-smile under a fedora on the other side of the library. Charles instantly softened, heartbeat speeding, and he unfolded the plane.

“I’m sorry for leaving. I was just shocked. That’s the only excuse I have. Please forgive me. Hang out soon? I’d like that. ~E.”

Charles gathered up his books, one on top of the other, walked over to Erik, and planted his books around the both of them, high enough so no one else would see them. Erik grinned, full and toothy, and there, hidden from the prying eyes of their schoolmates, he kissed Charles back.

*  
“What do you want to do when you’re older? When you’re out of school and in the real world?” Charles asked Erik. They were in the playground on their street, alone, for the dark clouds had warded off neighboring children and their parents.

“I don’t know. Something in music. I don’t really know what. I’ve never really been able to write it. What about you? A writer?”

“I really don’t think my stories are that good,” (Erik made a face), “but I’ve always wanted to be a teacher.”

Erik made another face. 

“Why on earth…? That’d be the most horrible thing I could think of. Screaming children with attitudes… yuk.”

“Oh god no, not at a high school! I mean a professor of literacy or something at a college.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound so bad… Ha! I just got a mental image of you at the age of forty, lecturing a hoard of people about the joys of the semi-colon...”

Charles swatted at Erik’s head. “Mean! I am not like that.”

“You are. You’re wearing tweed too. You look like a Scotsman threw up on you.”

Charles lurched off the swing to tackle Erik to the ground and tickle him.

“And you have a bald spot. Did I mention that?” 

Erik was laughing and running, too quick for Charles –until he tripped over a tree root. He rolled onto his back, laughing ever more like a hyena. Charles seized his opportunity, pinning Erik underneath him and grasping a hold of his sides, tickling him. Erik was stronger though, and was soon on top of Charles, tickling him back. Their peals of laughter softened into kisses, while the clouds above them cracked open and baptized them in torrents of rain. Hand in hand, running from the rain that had already soaked them, back to Charles’ house, they abandoned their clothing to wear each other’s skin.

This would be the first time of many.

*

The first time Erik had heard and seen opera, Charles had literally seen the goosebumps rise on his forearms, and the revelation break like dawn upon his face.

“I have to go to New York to see my dad in about two weeks,” Charles had said to him.

Erik was about to nod in acknowledgement, when he realized that two weeks away would be their anniversary. A whole year with each other –surely that deserved some form of recognition? He began to protest, asking why couldn’t Charles see his dad another time; I-know-he’s-your-dad-and-you-don’t-see-him-often-but-a-whole-year…

“I already asked him if you could come, dummy,” Charles smirked. Erik felt sheepish, jumping to conclusions so quickly. 

“He knows?” Erik asked, “about us…?”

“Yes. And he wants to meet you –don’t be scared, he’s not scary, I promise. Do you have a suit anywhere…? I think he said something about going to the opera…” Charles mentioned it casually, as though going to the opera was a casual occurrence with his family. Of course it was.

Erik couldn’t help but think of his future self, doomed to endure close to four hours of unintelligible soprano laments and depressing, complicated plotlines. And with Charles’ father –God help him. 

But the reality was nowhere near as terrible as all of his imagined scenarios. Charles’ father was a beaming, balding man, who clapped Erik on the back and shook his hand (“what a good, firm grip you have there, son” he said) and bought them dinner before the taxi ride to the opera house. He asked the traditional questions; “what are you studying, what about your parents, how did you and Charles meet,” and never once did he stop smiling. Erik liked him from the handshake.

And the actual opera? As soon as the opening crescendo-ing chords and a dramatized baritone voice crashed onstage, followed by the extravagant gold costumes of ancient Egypt, Erik knew what he wanted to do. He could barely look away, and when the lead lovers –suffocating in each other’s arms and a stone tomb –sang their last, Erik’s eyes were littered with involuntary tears. He had chills.

*

Mornings in the Xavier apartment were always quiet, whether Erik was there or not. When he was gone, staying in New York or some other place or touring, Charles would be looking over his appointments for the day over tea or coffee and cereal, then reading the paper, circling errors and filling in the Sudoku. When Erik was there, though there was much to catch up on and many kisses to be delivered, both of them were usually too sleep-caked and drowsy to open their mouths much at all. The rich smell of coffee pervaded the air, and the only sounds were those of frying eggs and bacon, and the turning of newspaper pages. Together they circled errors and filled in Sudoku, brushing chaste kisses to one another every so often, anchoring each other back down to earth. This morning, the routine muffle was cut short by a yelp from Erik. Charles snapped up, thinking Erik had hurt himself. Mouth agape, Erik pointed to an advert.

“Positions for study at the Riverside Opera Company –apply soon, only six positions available,” it read. Charles, sharing Erik’s excitement, read on. 

“Erik, this is perfect for you!” Charles exclaimed. “It’d be what you needed to get you started, and it’d give you the confidence to audition for other operas!” 

Erik had only auditioned for one opera before, without much experience. His favourite director had been working on the production though, and Erik had copped a fair amount of bruising to his confidence with the harsh rejection. Since then, though he wanted nothing more than opera, but although he hated singing songs he didn’t even write with people he didn’t like, he had been too anxious to take another chance, another step towards his dream by himself. And now it seemed as though the universe had just put this opportunity right in front of him. He couldn’t believe it.

Erik’s still ajar mouth closed slightly as he nodded to Charles in slow agreement. 

“If you don’t sign yourself up for this course, I’ll sign you up myself,” Charles threatened. Erik knew he meant it. 

Charles handed Erik the cordless phone, before his own mobile buzzed with his agency on the line, telling him to get to his next appointment ASAP. Charles, loath to leave Erik alone when he had only been back less than a day, sighed, kissed his scratchy cheek goodbye.

*

With a flourish of his fingers, Charles finished his final draft of the novel. He pulled his headphones out of his ears to better align himself back in reality. Immediately assaulted with the ruckus of Starbuck’s teenage crowd, he put one back in. Radiating with a huge cloud of satisfaction and a rush from the accomplishment, he thought he might buy himself another coffee in celebration, but upon checking his watch, realized he had only five minutes to make it five blocks to his next appointment. Suddenly weighted with the accumulated exhaustion this job had caused him over the years, he flopped back in his armchair. He decided he didn’t care if he was late this time –this was his tenth casting of the day, and he felt run off his feet. Somehow, somehow, other models did this. Though the ‘how’ was a mystery to him –he guessed there were people who actually liked being in front of the camera, twisting their features to fit the photographers’ or designer’s vision. Taking out his phone, he called his agent.

*

When Charles and Erik broke up (in the heated mist of their fifth fight, abuse raining down from both of their mouths like bullets), two years after the first time their lips met, Charles started thinking in numbers. First he counted the days, wondering how many more it would take until he forgot to count. Then he counted the weeks, and how many more weeks it would take for him to feel okay again, to not be carrying around guilt and anger and hurt in a body bag behind him. He wondered how many people Erik had managed to fuck in those weeks, how many times Erik might have thought of him. He wondered how many books Erik had read in the time they had spent not talking. How many books Erik hadn’t given back yet, how many items of clothing and underwear. On nights when the numbers were particularly searing, Charles would attempt to drown them out with wine or whisky (then the numbers would evanesce, and he would be left with stupid thoughts such as “I wonder if my toothbrush is still in his bathroom cupboard”). Five times his self-restraint wavered under the alcohol, and he ended up trying to call Erik, though he never picked up the phone. Twice Raven found him passed out by the phone, smelling of vomit and desperation, and she would wash his face and half carry him to bed. Charles would make up scenarios in his head where he would run into Erik, and miraculously they would forget that they had ever broken up, and things would be the same and right again.  
And then Charles began to lose track of the numbers. Gradually he began to drink less. He sought comfort in a boy who was roughly the same shape and size as Erik, and sometimes (when he closed his eyes), he could convince himself that this was Erik, though when they touched, Charles knew he couldn’t fool himself –this new boy didn’t curve and bend in the right places; the imprint of Erik’s climaxes were burned too perfectly into Charles’ mind for him to press onto another’s body. The new boy didn’t kiss the right way, didn’t move the right way. And really, if he was being honest with himself, Charles was relieved when he and his family moved away, and he never had to talk to the boy again. Charles began to find himself again after that, in a new town, new school. He exorcised his overdue feelings through poems and fiction, breathing stale gloom into his words, and he began to feel at least partially stable again. 

Over the next five years he had two boyfriends, and even one girlfriend. This girlfriend, Angela, was how he and Erik came to find each other again.

*

In the weeks leading up to the concert, Charles never once put two and two together. It never once crossed his mind that Erik from ‘Erik and the Brotherhood’ could possibly be his old Erik, and neither did he bother to listen to any of their music –had he done so, he might have recognized Erik’s deep, gravelly voice with shivers of realization coursing through his veins like snakes. But of course, he never did. Just listened to Angela rave about how pretty the lead singer was, how much Charles would just love him (since they had similar taste in men), how nice the lead singer’s hands were. It wasn’t until they were standing outside the concert hall (Angela haggling with a scalper for backstage passes) that it suddenly dawned on Charles that Erik was Erik. He gazed up at the purple and red-dashed posters and his fingers instantly remembered that jawline, those hands, that fish-hook smile. He mentally kicked himself, feeling waves of anxiety, pride, and the twinge of old scars opening. He couldn’t say a word for the rest of the evening. Five-year-old memories kicked his brain, and god, he was so proud of Erik. It wasn’t entirely what he wanted to do, but god, he had made it. And after the concert, when signings were being done and Angela insisted on waiting in line for hours because she hadn’t been able to procure the backstage passes, Charles was still reeling. Erik grinned his celebrity-grin at them, but his entire face faltered when he recognized Charles. And then there was that fish-hook smile again that was only for Charles, only ever for Charles.

“Would you like me to sign your arm?” Erik asked, recognition woven into the question. 

Charles held out his arm, trying not to shiver at the way the felt-tip tickled, and the warm pressure of Erik’s fingers. He surreptitiously scrawled “dinner?” and a phone number onto Charles’ wrist. 

Angela never once asked what Erik had written, thankfully, too enwrapped with her signed CD case. She left him for a boy with a motorbike not much longer afterwards, but Charles wasn’t too miffed. He found Erik’s phone number and, upon his voice answer, said “Angela and I broke up. Your turn to make me eggs on cold toast.”

Three long dinner and lunch dates, and they were caught up completely on the past five years: Erik’s sudden and baffling introduction to the pop music industry; Charles’ mother’s friend who showed her friend a photograph of Charles and indirectly scouted him for a modeling agency; Erik’s raging popularity taking over school and eventually wiping it out of the picture; similar happenings with Charles’ modeling (“It must be your eyes,” Erik said) and how he had had to drop out of his English-teaching course halfway through the year in order to support himself through it; Erik’s sole attempt at opera and subsequent rejection and confidence-shattering…

After the forth dinner had been demolished, Erik took Charles’ arm and led him through cobblestone alleyways, lit in golden glows from streetlights. The late-summer-night air was shimmering with live music from the numerous restaurants, and the tipsy laughter of the crowds. Moths cluttered round the fairy lights, trying to break into them, and one landed on Erik’s turtleneck sweater. Charles felt red and warm and shiny from wine, and it must have affected him more so than usual, because he felt so, so happy and so lost in a daydream that he had once had, capturing this moment entirely, years before it became a reality. He brushed Erik’s hand with his own, trying to make it seem accidental. Electricity seemed to animate them both with sparks and smiles, and on a fairy-light-lit bridge over a crystalline river, Charles and Erik’s long-parted fingers intertwined. Light as moth wings, their lips met.

*

“Charlie baby, you look sick,” Erik cooed, touching his forehead.

“I’m not sick. I refuse to be sick. I’m just stressed,” Charles said.

“Is the agency overworking you?” Almost as soon as he said it, Erik wished he hadn’t brought up Charles’ work again. Thankfully, Charles didn’t get defensive this time –he almost agreed.

“Maybe. Not compared to how much other models are worked though.”

“You’ve never been able to cope with the amount of stress others seem to though, darling. You have too high a standard for yourself; that makes it worse. Ask your agent for a holiday,” Erik suggested, understandingly.

The words hadn’t even hung in the air for two seconds when Charles’ phone buzzed. This was the fifth time today. They both glared at it simultaneously. 

“I think I might. A permanent one.”

As soon as his decision was made, Charles had answered the phone, the taste of freedom in the air around him.

*

Three Months Later.

Charles hadn’t been to New York City since his father had passed away, two years ago. It hadn’t changed a lot, from what he could tell; people still swarmed around the city, making dangerous beelines across the road, whistling to taxis, teenagers strutting around like peacocks as though trying to be discovered and showered with fame, businesswomen in their Louboutin shoes and Starbucks and lacquered fingernails. Even the weather was the same as the last time he was here –rain and snowflakes torpedoing down from the winter sky. The difference was that last time, the rain was sour and bitter with the grey grief of funerals, and now it shimmered with gold pride and anticipation. The golden looming of the opera house ahead peeked under Charles’ umbrella. Erik’s first performance; opening night. He felt he might actually burst into a million filaments. Not even the gigantic theatre could house his feelings –he could swallow the entire building, the city, the moon, the ocean, and the sky. Drunk on euphoria, he thought he could even make Erik a crown of the stars (that’s poetic, he thought in the back of his mind, tucking it away, perhaps for his next novel).

He tucked his hand into his suit pocket, running a finger along the velvet box that kept safe a gold-banded question.


End file.
